Poems - 'A Glance' (And Sponsor Me)

This first poem was first written I think last year when I was writing 200mph; when I could write a good poem and throw it to one side and write another and go get drunk and depressed and laugh my head off. Was a funny time. So I've collected 14 poems so far and edited them. Potentially they are supposed to be the best I've written, but I'm not sure. Still need my friends to read them.

The second poem I wrote 2 days ago while listening to music and probably watching tele. I was just putting words together, didn't change anything because I didn't feel like it, but the main thing was the rhythm because it was meant to be a lyric or something.

My poems can be personal sometimes, and sometimes I don't like this. Confessional poetry sounds too self-centrered. I'd read stuff about war and politics and changing the world, and I've got a poems about how I'm feeling. "feelin' fine." But I recently read William Blake and Philip Larkin (since I have their books, that I kept from school haha). Also read some Bob Dylan lyrics. And I have a variety of themes, inc. 'Our Nuclear Future' and 'Modern Life' (don't know if I put them on this blog), and three Postmodern experimental poems called 'Hypertext Production' 'An Examination of Earth' and 'Cubism.' The latter I'm quite proud of.

Last Note: Please Sponsor me on my bike ride for charit across Death Valley, Nevada: http://www.justgiving.com/michaelholloway

A Glance


At a glance, I am plain,
All salted and personal, the starving soldier,
Up against the wall, the small faceless joke,
It is impossible to tell when she is coming;
The fridge is empty, an aging imposter.
Our weary desire for people
Wears us out;
Everyone’s qualified, the impossible children,
Constant drivel, the outcry of incidents.
My friends, left alone,
Red-faced, she faces again;
She works the world, curled into herself.
Lit from underneath
I headed up generation to generation,
Perhaps our grace graces us all.
The half-decided days wanes into itself like women.
And me, tea-bags for eyes,
The slow baptised dog.




Untitled poem (written in about 20 minutes)

I am sitting here dreaming I
Was in another place different to here,
I’m staring at this painting seeing
Turn brightly I am a
Knight in shining armour,
There aint much use in calling
Out names forgiven forgotten
Outside I am a broken
Washing machine,
There aint much use in writing
Things are useless to me now,
The echo of our righteous
Plays on the negative
I am the rightful joker,
The mother tells the time like a clock
And these deaths couldn’t have been kinder,
I am here I have been shot down,
Someone screams to their mother
And I am not yet invented,
Now the days are boxed in
And it’s dark and it’s old in this North end of town,
And I’ll play this in A-minor.

Dare Death Valley

On 10th September 2009, I'm going to cycle across Death Valley, Nevada for charity. I've decided to do it. I'm raising £1,400 for Childreach International, which helps tackles child poverty around the world. There's a few of us doing it, so we'll raise quite a bit of money for a good cause.

I'm trying to raise money from anywhere I can, so any help would be very much appreciated! I have a Justgiving page here:

http://www.justgiving.com/michaelholloway


Anyway, I recently bought a printer and have printed and edited 10 poems so far. I think they're good enough to be published, but don't think I'll be doing that just yet. I think I'll collect a load together, staple them, then give it to someone to read. See what they think. If it's rubbish, then nevermind. If it's good then I'll get all self-assured for 15 minutes and believe I'm a famous writer, then forget the whole thing and go watch TV.

I do make it an aim for this year or next year to publish a book of poetry, though. And they will be good.

A Confused Protest - Anger and Communism

I wrote a song today after seeing the protests in London on the News. I wanted to be there, but obviously I'm not. I liked it and I agreed with it. But what was strange was there was about 4 or 5 different protests. It started with the financial protests outside the Bank of England and the G20 diplomats in London discussing it. So there were protests to get the message across that bankers are stealing our money while we're going poorer and poorer.

It was peaceful and carnivalesque at first. But there was a mixture of anti-war, anti-capitalist, and climate change protesters. Then these anti-capitalists mixed with communists with the communist flag (which is fine because I'm fine with some communism). But then anarchists with their faces convered started sirring shit, picking fights with the poice, which is pointless.

I saw a Chinese flag (probably for communism) and next to it a Tibetan flag. Some kid was interviewed on Sky News or BBC News and he didn't know what he was talking about. I saw a banner which read: "Consumerists Suck" and I thought, yeah, and where did you buy the material for that banner?

There was a 4 horseman of the apocalypse theme with the carnival parts. I saw a banner which read: "Capitalism isn't Working." Okay. Fine. I'm interested in Communism, I've studied parts of it, and was going to write about it (so this gives me good material) but to be honest, these people wouldn't last in a Communist state. There would be someone to take the lead, and then turn into a Fascist regime. There would be no freedom to protest. These are just kids who want to be naughty and smash up some windows and smack a policeman and then go home to their things they've bought within this Capitalist society.

So I don't know what I'm trying to say when sometimes I like Communism, but I just don't beieve all this. We don't need fascists, we need peace; and if you're going to overthrow the Government, fine, but don't overrule me!


They’re protesting to the world
They’re protesting in the streets,
And I want you to watch
Before they’re covered in sheets,

There is blood on his face
Screaming at the police,
The war won’t be won
‘Till someone’s on their deathbed,

They want you to leave
Stay or go away,
Capturing your image
In a peasant kind of way,

And who owns these streets?
They shout they are ours,
Smoking monkeys that watch
As they trample over cars,

And the idiot anarchists know
Not what they are protesting,
Just what a riot
What Union Jack are you protecting?

And I fail to see your point,
You are just as bad,
With Tibet and Chinese flags
And more police holding you back,

And four horsemen of the Apocalypse
Are strolling all around you,
Surrounding yourselves with graveyards,
I just don’t know if I believe you.

Untitled Short Story (experimental short story)

Your body says this:

Back in 1985 I was like a piece of meat in the fridge, wrapped in a blanket, a blank tablet, a blank bullet, bland skin and very tasteless. My taste in music was mild. My mild character was going nowhere, but I loved the smell out of hospital, like I smelled of milk and oats, I got the cravings for milk and oats – all I got was milk and mush. Milk was my main source of food. It began to leave a bitter taste in my mouth and I spit up some milk sometimes because my belly was so full of milk. I felt myself turning as white as milk. My skin at this age was dark-ish, like mocha, it paled over time, keeping a dim colour that made me look healthy even when I wasn’t.

Your body is made out of milk or coffee or whatever it is that you drink. Your body splits in two and your soul leaves you to hitchhike up the road.

Your soul says this:

I am leaving you because I no longer love you and you have only caused me misery and pain. It’s hard to live with such a person as you, and I’ve had enough; I’m leaving you to find someone else. Imagine that, your soul in someone else’s body. Me. In someone worth more. Imagine that, replacing Bob Dylan’s soul, or Katherine Hepburn’s, or Micky Rourke’s. Imagine yourself without me, and how hellish you’d feel. I bet you’d miss me, because you’re only half the person you are without me. Half a man. (Or half a woman, whatever you are).

Back in 1997 you were old enough to know things. Disgusting things, and I was ashamed to be a part of it. Ugly things your body found sexy. But the beautiful thing I saw, which your body found sexy aswell. There were two or three deaths in the family around this time, and I helped you through it, but would you listen? No.

You look like a prostitute without me. I think you could do better. I love you, but you could do better without me.

Your self says this:

Oh. Where am I? Damn, if I could touch her, I would. That smell of salt and water and death and hot vampiric sleaze. Black tight shirts and underwear left to one side. Dark rooms for me to develop and not photographs. If I could touch that, I’d touch it all over. I feel my body moving and swaying and begin to rotate.

This body is growing, still, and I am only young, still, but it’s old and toughened as if I’m 85. But back in 2007 I drank myself to death on my birthday with two friends and we laughed until we died and inside I didn’t know where I was. So I punished my body so much, and my brain still knew how to write and so I wrote things and it was good, but soon I began to feel empty inside. I thought I needed to love someone. I moved house and lived with some friends in the years to come. Married young with this sexy young kitten and she was ferocious; but I was worse. So we divorced after a few weeks and I still felt empty.

A couple of years later I would realise that every year that I drank myself half to death, laughing so much that I’d get a free workout, I realised that when I looked in the mirror, there was nothing to look at. Not really. I might have accomplished some things. Written some books. Poems. Songs. Painted. Played guitar. All that arty stuff. I’d be the greatest friend. The greatest love. The greatest conqueror of night by far. And the mirror would betray me like I betrayed my body.

I switch on the TV and see some actor winning an award for some beautiful performance in some mediocre drama, and I’d see a bit of myself in that actor. And I’d imagine being a famous actor. It’d almost be as if my soul had packed up and left, and gone into someone else; had left with a dream of Hollywood.

Back in 1985, I met my soul at the train station, and I’d promised I’d be good. But then I grew up.

Poem 24/3

The world sees me as a Waterloo Sunset
Sun is shinin, Boyo, summer is on its way;
The world is shining like a bomb-flash –
Bad flesh shining the world is on its way

Outside the world is speaking to me,
Bright glory days ahead of time,
The world says it’s going to murder me
That will be justice for my crime

And punishment are like Oedipus the Everyman
Fighting for what he knows could be wrong,
And all of the sexless patients
Are even writing up their own songs

All mistakes on Earth are all down to me,
Pulsating bacon of desire,
And humanoid satanic robots
Sleeping with blood in their wires,

We missed Heaven and land on Mars,
Or Eris, or whatever is left;
The sunset babies from 5 hours ago
Now a bomb-track with no breath


**Wrote this in about 20-30 minutes, haven't changed much of it, so like most of my poems, it is a rough draft still. Used a small bit of notes, such as "All mistakes on Earth are down to me," and "Pulsating bacon of desire," "Oedipud the Everyman," and "Missed Heaven wen to mars - or eris." The title was the last note left over.

Also, a list of songs written down as answers to questions, (sort of an exercise). I got Q: 'How does the world see you?' A: Waterloo Sunset - the Kinks. And Q: 'What do my friends think of me?' A: Bombtrack - Rage Against The Machine.

Because I was rhymimg, I was using words again, and changing them slightly, like Bomb-track and bomb-flash. Turned into a song, surreal images of nihilist world with a little sci-fi at the end.

Saoirse - and Are We War Mongering?

It's St. Patrick's Day. I'm not going out, unfortunately, couldn't find anyone going out on short notice, because I'd forgot with being hungover all weekend. Anyway, on the train home I found an Irish Republican newspaper (strangely, it was from december), that must have been left by some Irish guy coming to the city for Paddy's Day. I was reading it and it was quite interesting. It has a mixture of propaganda and anger fuelled at both the British and the Northern Irish. I kept the paper, keeping no sides, but knowing it is interesting that the British rule on Irish soil, and Irish Republicans hate this and also hate the other Irish for accepting it. I have a friend from Northern Ireland, but I can't remember his political views. He's a film maker, I'd like to see him make some sort of film on the subject.

You get confused about whose who. Dropping bombs as a method of protest is disgraceful; also using bombs to try and force whoever out of the country. I mean, songs from the 80's and 90's seem relevent now - one I can think of is 'Zombie' by The Cranberries, an Irish band speaking out against the bombing. "What's in your head, Zombie?"

With war still going on and no one listening to anyone, it's hard to get any kind of point across. People turn against Muslims, and Muslims don't listen anyway. There was a recent protest in London, I think it was, and British Muslims protested against the war by protesting soldiers coming home. Bad idea. Now, I'm against war, but I think you should never target a soldier as means of protest against war. It's like shooting the messenger. They're doing a job. I have a friend who is a soldier, and it was like he was defensive in case his job was insulted. Anyway, why is a soldier a killer and a politian isn't?

I keep hearing things like 'it's the sign of things to come.' That sounds apocalyptically bad. People are prophesising their own generation's tragedy. It sounds like the blacks in the 60's when racism was a social norm, and they had to revolt themselves to be recognised as human beings.

Are we going backwards as a species, or what? It just feels like our society is folding in on itself. Time slows down and we go back to how it was back then. The 20th Century had many terrible instances, I can't help but foresee more in this Century.

Liverpool 4-1 - and collecting ideas

Didn't go to Wigan last week, my friend, who is a semi-pro snooker/pool player, had a game. I remember when I lived with him and he let me down with going to his games, he'd come back and make it up by buying a load of alcohol and we'd drink all night watching stupid films and laughing at anything all the time. Can't do that anymore, since he's in a different city.

I was hungover all yesterday after I was out drinking all of Saturday. Thing is, I'd been in town since 6am (got up at 5) and I met my friend (who I've known since we were kids) at around 12pm. We watched the football in the pub (Liverpool v Man Utd) and we won 4-1, and I almost ruined my voice with shouting like I did last month at the Frank Turner gig.

I was never a sport fan, but I like the footy these days, I haven't got much so might as well have something. I love how the Liverpool fan are the most loyal of fans, and our team always end up around 4th at the end of the season. (Even though we are the best and most successful club in the whole of Europe). And the fierce fierce rivalry against Man Utd. And we've lost ont 2 times this season and we're only a couple of points away from 1st place (at equal 3rd right now).

Anyway, we sat in our favorite bar until around 9 or 10pm and we talked for ages. Just about moving out and getting a place to live, crappy jobs, holiday in Europe, which barmaid was hotter. I told him about the novel I was going to work on, which I haven't bothered with, and I knew I wouldn't do it, I don't have the patience or the attention span. But it doesn't matter. I'm still collecting ideas.

I'm not good at making notes on my laptop, I like to write by hand, but I don't even have a paper pad, I should remember to buy one. My ideas are ... well, secret. .... Actually, writing this makes me want to write that story now. Damn.

The Primitive Machine - why we are intrigued by the drunk

At quarter to ten he asked me the time, and I only had to look at the station clock underneath the train times to tell him that it was quarter to ten, not knowing if I should tell him it was in the morning not the night. He was short – up to my shoulder, like a little boy – and he had a long dirty white beard like Father Christmas, and he was mumbling something I couldn’t quite understand, so I said ‘What?’

‘I’m out of it,’ he said – as far as I could guess, that was as close as it got. And I know he was out of it from the numb speech and the glazed dead-look in his eyes I saw when he looked at me to speak. He stunk off piss so bad it was like a baby’s nappy change, or a public toilet with the overwhelming stench of ammonia caught in my nose and mouth. That yellow stink catching at the back of my throat. He swayed on his feet and when he steadied himself he was a step closer to me, shoulder to shoulder.

‘I need something to bring me down,’ he said – again, I’m paraphrasing.

‘You should go get a cup of coffee, then,’ I said. I paraphrase myself, now, because I can’t remember my exact words. But I told to go get some coffee, immediately regretting this in case he wants dome change. But he shakes his head defiantly, No, don’t want.

Yeah, don’t want none of that. I thought of him being in the pub all night – pint after pint. I imagined the first pint yesterday afternoon. I wondered when he pissed himself, or was he doing it as he spoke, maybe that’s why it smelled so strong. I looked down to see if there was a puddle coming to meet my shoes, but there wasn’t.

‘I need a bring down,’ he said, and I almost heard him say Man. I just need a bring down, maaan. I didn’t know what this was.

‘You don’t know what I mean, do you?’ he said. Obviously, I didn’t. What’s a bring down after a piss-up? Whiskey?

‘Drugs,’ he said. Oh yeah.

‘Haven’t got none,’ I said. No money, either.

‘Didn’t ask for any, did I?’ he said. For a second his tone changed and I’m expecting him to bring out a knife and slowly try to stab me, stumbling and eventually giving up, but the situation would be more frightening than it sounds. But he waddles off, with a thick trail of piss air behind him. I can’t help but laugh when he talks to a girl with bright red hair, who clearly ignores him, and he walks again, leaving the girl unable to even breathe a sigh of relief with the stink. He talks to an old woman, about his height, who gets off the Kirby train, and they seem to get in a conversation. She must be too polite to leave him, or a kind Christian who wants to help, but can only offer to listen. I don’t know what he’s saying, but a couple of people stare at him as they pass by, they should at least drop some coins in a hat or something.

He eventually got on the same train as me, and I got on the next carriage down, because he stunk so bad. It was like you could taste the hot liquid through the black felt-like jogging or sweat pants he wore.

He is like a Greek Tragedy, unable to avoid the disaster in front of him, while others – including myself – are just spectators of his life. But why are we fascinated by them? Because we are. We stop and stare, and if we don’t stop, we still stare. Wow, my life could have been like that if I never got a bath. Or, Wow, if I could drink all night, and do drugs in the morning, my life would be just dandy. Or, Dirty bastard, get away from me. It’s funny how close we are to being like that. I think we’re all self-destructive, it’s a primitive machine; what stops us being so primordial is living a non-animalistic life – How clean we are; how well dressed we are; Oh granny, what nice job you have... All the better to keep my life in order and pay for private accommodation away from any riff-raff on the streets.

We are all exposed to danger; we are all animals. What is interesting is how we refuse to know that we are animals. I’m not an animal, I wear pants! Sophocles’ Oedipus and Freud’s Oedipus was an intellectual man who exposed himself to the dangers of reality and has repressed yearnings of patricide and incest. We, as humans, carry the repressed yearnings of death and desire. Those two concepts may or may not intersperse, but both exist side by side; without death there is no life, without desire there is no life. Therefore, Oedipus the Everyman was the animal he fought not to be, and the drunk I saw in the train station was the animal he fought to become.

The desire for anything is in us all – as is death – and the most animalistic action is the desire to kill, as humans we do not want to kill and we don’t want death. What I’m saying is, the desires in life are for the good or the bad, you end up a rich New York stockbroker, or you end up a drunken old man in a train station smelling of piss. We are apart from animals in that we are the human instinctively primitive, with no control over our destiny.

Professional Drinking - Penny Lane - And Calego

Coming back home from work on the bus on Sunday, I overheard this woman talking quite loud on her phone. I started laughing to myself with what she was saying. Stuff like "He's a cronic alcoholic," and I was thinking, wouldn't you want to keep something like that a little more privite? This was as the bus was driving through the roughest part of the city, all buildings boarded up and filth in the streets and writing on the walls. I wouldn't walk through there at night unless you wanted some kind of drug. I think this woman was talking about her husband (or just a male she knew) and she said: "He might as well be my professional drinking partner," which I thought was clever. I had this in my head all the was until it was my stop.

The bus gets closer to where I'm getting off and it passes the Penny Lane bus (I think it was the number 62, I think it used to be the number 1). It's not a tourist bus, just a normal bus driving these people home. And I look at them on the bus and I'm wondering if they're Beatles fans. I mean, not everyone in Liverpool are Beatles fans, but everyone respects them to a certain degree. Most the old fellahs still like them. I was wondering if those people lived on Penny Lane, I don't see why not, I think there are still houses there. It's not really a tourist spot for me, just a another road to the South of the city.

It's funny because I live here. You get to say: "Bloody tourists." It switched round when I go on holiday and I'm amazed by a bank or something. My brother showed me this website thats sell American chocolate bars and sweets, he knew I'd like that from when we went to Florida in 2001 and we bought a suspicious amount of American sweets onto the plane.

I think I'm going to Wigan on wednesday. Going to see my friends I haven't seen in a year. I used to live with them in Uni. It's horrible that's been the quickest year of my life. I had the best time of my life in that flat last year. Got some good pieces of writing done.

Looking over last poem with translations, and I like these lines:

"Zal silences me."
"I am calego."
"Mannen stalks annen mann
mann stalks kvinne..."

Might just keep them in the final one.

Novel - Europe - And Railway Tracks

So here I am at quater to 6 in the afternoon by myself, watching TV and drinking a can of coke, and I'm thinking about writing a novel. I've had the idea for ages, I've had loads of story ideas that were noted down, but I've had one that I thought of in my first year at uni, and I want to write it. I've been leaving it becuause I thought I was too young to write it, but I'll spend some years on it. I don't know how my uni tutor would think of it; he'd be impressed, but he'd know I'd be rushing it as usual.

I just need to have something to do. Short stories and poems do nothing for me.

Still haven't left my job, but been looking. My mate at work, who studies law, likes reading and we talk about books sometimes. It's just one of the many conversations a bunch of us have there: Books, football, girls, drinking, music, films. He likes his non-fiction. I found it both funny and interesting that at 9:30 in the morning, when we finished work, he went into Waterstones bookshop to get a book on World War II and The Holocaust. (It got me talking about Schindler's List).

Anyway, the next day he's says to me, as I'm carrying a bunch of curtain poles, I should forget fiction writing and write a really interesting non-fiction book. I thought that was funny. We then got on talking about quitting the job and stealing a washing machine on our way out.

I'm going round Europe in the Spring/Summer. From here to France, then on a trip maybe through Germany, and ending up in Italy. It will be a three week trip and it's the only thing I've got to look forward to. I won't forget to take a notepad to write while I'm there. I suppose I need to travel to get my thoughts on writing back on track.

This is a painting I did a couple of weeks ago. Don't know what it's meant to be, I just like putting a load of colours together. My sister said it looks kind of like railway tracks.

Reading Between the Lies

I am sitting here at 9:33pm where small lamp is my eyes,
I am falling behind with many things – writing, sleep, and people –
The deep depressing rooms lived with me since 1991, each death
Built in mechanically. What ghost does is what ghost sees.
I am being eaten alive by fleas.

A hair on the paper makes a shadow of me –
I am forcibly rubbing my skin for clarity: my arm, my neck,
Regret silences me because the horror of memories;
Because Christina screams out to me!
Because now I’m thinking of three people:
Man stalks another man
Man stalks woman...
Trapped now in these terrible impact talks,

I make impacts – they are dangerous paradise.
It turns to 9:54pm; the hot buzz of the halogen warms the room,
My feet are bare and veins appear in my hands from heat.
The werewolf is angry and says ‘why are you such a stranger?’
The banana is so laid back;

I am the city, I am all around,
Gotta see this city to the end,
Stuck in job till Doomsday – back in work on Monday –
Beard ten-feet long and mounting pressure of waiting still.

Dylan Moran and Basho, gotta see it,
Bout 2:30-ish, if that’s alright?
She’s busy all morning, free in the afternoon,
Comes down with glandular fever, and we’re all doomed.

“TV is shit! I wish I
Ws gettin pssed.”



I got the title from the last piece of notes I had so just threw it in as the title. I don't like it, it doesn't make sense as the title.

[This following one is the same poem with translations to some of the words. Languages used are French, Indonesian, Polish, Dutch, German, and Portuguese. It was just an experiment to see what the words would sound like:


I am sitting here at 9:33pm where small lamp is my oko,
I am falling de balakang with many things – writing, sleep, and people –
The dalam depressing kamar lived with me since 1991, each death
Built in mechanically. Ghost, co nie jest tym, co widzi duchy.
I am being eaten alive by fleas.

Un cheveux on the paper makes a shadow of me –
I am forcibly rubbing my skin for clarity: my arm, my neck,
Zal silences me because the horror of memories;
Because Christina screams out to me!
Because now I’m thinking of three people:
Mannen stalks annen mann
mann stalks kvinne...
Trapped now in these terrible impact talks,

I make impacts – they are gefahrliche paradise.
It turns to 9:54pm; the hot buzz of the halogen warms the room,
My feet are bare and veins appear in my hands from heat.
The werewolf is angry and says ‘why are you such a stranger?’
The banana is so laid back;

I am the city, I am calego,
Gotta see this city to the end,
Stuck in job till Doomsday – back in work on Monday –
Beard ten-feet long and mounting pressure of waiting still.

Dylan Moran and Basho, tenho que ve-lo,
Bout 2:30-ish, if that’s alright?
She’s busy all morgen, free in the afternoon,
Comes down with glandular fever, and we’re all doomed.

“TV is shit! I wish I
Ws gettin pssed.”

Sooner I will come back
And irritate who I am
Some successful demon,
Individual afternoons empty rooms dim romantic light
Tell your sister
Its pointless trying
Tell your brother
I’m not even trying;
Lying down forever
And your spine fastens to the ground;
Lying in bed is torture
And these gorgeous horror evenings
Staring out the magazine window
Portraying a groovy book of sexy
Morose celebrity prostitutes
That hardly practise their sayings like:
Good game, that,
And me, practically born in a tunnel
Because evry place I’ve been
I’ve seen not even everything
But something lying down forever,
Evry polluted morning smells of fireworks a terrible aroma
Evry polluted woman giving me the eye
The body the look the practise turn around
And get –

Practically that tunnel
And strain and strain,
You see, no one dies until someone dies
And then all you get is the phone ringing
Wailing bawling like a baby;
And I sat down and wondered about this strain
Upon my perfect/imperfect vision –
‘Cause colours seem to change,
The high street gets taller like New York
And I close all the blinds in the house
And write these things to you
So you know that there’s been a death in the family.

The Only Snow in the North

19\10

The grey movements bare claw branches
Dazzling light over Lion & Unicorn
Radiates power thru window
Globes of light – orbed like eye-lens –
An Earth explosion howls and speaks to me

The world flashes
Swells and bursts and reveals
Wet footprints bulge in “O” shapes
Thick shadows like sharp black tongues
Fish-hooked barbed wire
Anti-clockwise snail greasy tracks
Trodden one foot on life,

Ave Maria frozen in the gutter
The window steams
And outside one man almost falls to his death,
Dead and bright garden tarpaulin pulled over – held down
By plank of wood, heavy wooden bush, the wooden garden and

Clean clean invisible air freezing cold.
The glowing hysterical road – Dies irae –
Is screaming as two people melt into the ground
Dancing the sky reddens softly
And awful lights of yellow and blue

Dean Street explodes in cataclysmic white,
Lion & Unicorn fight in the street –
Everything set low, the world turns dark.

Broken the full moon drools sit and smile on night
And morning the church is boarded up –
Spires shooting up like vines or weeds
Graffiti plastic bags and empty empty flat

Chimneys on flat hills with the fullest of blue sky
And dead pastel green soil and sick icy road.

Standing around and trainspotting
Then vanished from the air;
Marked wastes cold dark the damp smell:
The ruined
Blackberry

Living thru the eyes of others
Angel eyes I’ll refuse to pray
So you cannot damn me anymore,

Guns sharp swords in the hands of young children,
The air is whispering but the clock is talking,
Heartbreak I can’t change my violence,
Playing with the machine of creation:

See this bottle?
It’s not a bottle,
It’s a machine.

Will you marry it?
One of chief princes settles his violence
Red sky softens and rule of war begins.

My Methods for Writing

What I do is (when I'm in the mood or if I can put myself in the mood to write) drink very sweet coffee. (I drink tea most of the time, but that relaxes me, and I don't need to relax). I put music on loud, which can b something heavy to help me think, but I can also go for lyrical songs form Bob Dylan, The Doors, etc. Then I need to have some books out in fron of me; inc. what I'm reading at the moment (Dharma Bums), some random novels, books of poetry (all I have is Philip Larkin and William Blake and some anthologies, one of which has my own poem in).

With my glasses on and cross my legs sitting on my bed, make sure no one can come in, I get writing what falls into (or out of) my head. Write in notes and fit the pieces together, at the same time looking at lines of poems (not the full poem) from books and websites.

Poets that I'll definately be reading: Sylvia Plath, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Ted Berrigan, Charles Bukowski..

I think it's safe to say that I hate writing. But it's the only thing that keeps me sane. I remember sitting in a pub in Lancashire, talking with one of my creative writing tutors, and she asked me why I like to write, and I remember I said to her that I don't, but I feel lke I have to.

Who was it that said never create anything?? I'll look that up.. But I only half agree with that. It's one thing artists, mothers, and gods can do. "Playing with the machine of creation."

... Picked up guitar again. Bought some plecks (or picks). Missing high e string, so switched some round and have a lower sounding out-of-tune guitar.

Hate Writing - Citizen Kane - Bed Bus

I just don't feel like writing anymore - written like one line all week. If writing is my enemy then I feel better away from it. I seem to be writing in small bursts, I can't do it normally, if I write it has to be a proper piece. A great poem or story. Otherwise I hate it. I'm such a lazy writer, don't even know if I'm improving anymore. I should just keep what I've got, I mean Rimbaud gave up at around age 19. I'm just sayin'.

All I've been doing is watching films. Citizen Kane and Donnie Brasco recently. My music has gone towards The Velvet Underground.

Going to quit my job if I get this new job. It's hard to quit in a recession (some smart arse on tv says its now officially a recession), but a few of us got formal warnings for a number of things we've done and not done - being late, shirt untucked, name badge missing, talking and messing about. Don't get paid enough to be spoken to like a child.

Going to get writing over the weekend - even if it does seem pointless where I am right now. Here the note I wrote down yesterday I think it was: "Angel eyes I'll refuse to pray, so you cannot damn me anymore."

Had a dream last night that my bed was a bus. I was getting driven around Preston and I was avoiding the people I knew in uni. Then I was being driven around the streets at home, and I jumped off near my street. I think it cost me £1, which is cheaper than the normal bus.

A Fever - And Frank Turner Gig

My temperature is burning the paint off the walls. I'm not too well and this fever is making my heart go fast. Funny that I went into work this morning, felt myself getting dizzy as I walked around, but I laughed it off. Drinking Lemsip or Beechams and it stings my lips, and there's something on the inside of the cup.

Saw Frank Turner on saturday, and it was probably the best gig I've been to (maybe after the Dylan gig back in 2007). Me and my friend got really drunk. We shouted our heads off (which ruined my voice the next day). Frank was talking with the audience and starts talking about a bar he played in in Liverpool, and my friend shouts "Slaters!" (Meaning Slaters' bar) And that was funny. But then my friend looks at me and goes, "No I think he meant Hannah's bar." So it finished and we had some more drinks, and I wanted my coat back because it cost £50 and it was in the cloakroom for £1. We left and went to Korova, which was shit on Saturday and ended up back were we started. It was just about having a laugh with funny conversations with him and when we decided to leave, walking down the road, some racist starts talking to us. We're just going "yeah, is that so, mate?" until he leaves us alone.

We got the bus home. We had this conversation about music and musicians, and the music of 'now.' I mean everyone knows the great musicans and bands of the past, like The Beatles and Bob Dylan, but people now, like Frank Turner, are the musicans we're experiencing now. And when it gets to 30 40 years in the future, we'll look back and say were a part of that.

So I've been hungover and sick since then, but it was worth it. Anyway, I've been worse than this at uni. I wrote this short story the other day, but it doesn't make sense, but I think for me it's just practising my style.

Excerpt from 'Dharma Bums' - On Poets

'They were all meeting in the bar and getting high. But as they stood and sat around I saw that he was the only one who didn't look like a poet, though poet he was indeed. The other poets were either hornrimmed intellectual hepcats with wild black hair like Alvah Goldbook, or delicate pale handsome poets like Ike O'Shay (in a suit), or out-of-this-world genteel-looking Renaissance Italians like Francis DaPavia (who looks like a young priest), or bow-tied wild-haired old anarchist fuds like Rheinhold Cacoethes, or big fat bespectacled quiet booboos like Warren Coughlin. And all the other hopeful poets were standing around, in various costumes, worn-at-the-sleeves corduroy jackets, scuffly shoes, books sticking out of their pockets. But Japhy was in rough workingman's clothes he'd bought secondhand in Goodwill stores to serve him on mountain climbs and hike and for sitting in the open at night, for campfires, for hitchhiking up and down the coast.'

(Kerouac, The Dharma Bums p.13)


I read this while sitting on the train going to work. I really like the different images of poets and the difference between the upper-class intellectual and the scruffy working class poet.

Tobacco Warehouse

It was cool because afterwards, when we headed home, the sun was going behind some clouds and we were swimming on our out-of-focus words. It was all unfocused by then, I mean it was always unfocused like the lens of a camera was distracted by something close-up or far-off.
We rode the train ten minutes before the sun showed itself again. When it did it shined delicately through the windows. I sat facing you. You said 'What stop we getting off at?'

'Waterloo,' I said.

'That's fine,' you said.

'Yes,' I said. 'I'll get there, my friend loneliness.'

'It's warm today.'

'Weather's fine. It's the people you gotta watch.'

'I'd rather not watch them,' you said. You folded your arms and stared out of the window, the light bristling off your face. The morning Summer light highlighted your facial features and you looked like someone else, like a child.

'I could do with a smoke,' I said.

'Didn't know you smoked,' you said.

'Yeah.'

'When we get back let's go the beach.'

'In the morning?'

'It'll be fun.'

'You're mad,' I said.

'Come on, it'll be empty round this time.'

'The beach is empty all the time,' I said. 'Anyway, I'm too tired with work.'

'Oh come on, what happened to wanting to be young again?'

'I grew up.'

'You only said that a couple of hours ago.'

'I grew up since then.'

'We're going the beach.'

'Peter Pan never went the beach.'

'Yes he did. He lived near the ocean.'

'Well this city is near the Irish sea, not the ocean. And fine, I'll go the beach. I'll like to smoke there, it'll be cool.'

I sweated underneath my workclothes. You looked at me and looked away and then I looked out the window, watching the world wipe past my eyes. An English boy like me doesn't see everything, only what I see, and even then I can't do anything with it but see it. Admire it and walk on. I saw a girl working in a cake shop today. I thought of her making cakes for a living. Eat your work, I'd say to her.

'Would you want to get off here?'

'Here? No. I don't live here.'

I'm sure you got younger on the train. I felt the distant change in people's bodies; all of a sudden bodies no longer seemed beautiful, they were just things. Like my toothbrush or socks. People own socks like they own their bodies, no one shares toothbrushes. I looked at you and liked you.

The sounds of the train were so clear, so loud and fast. The empty and lost feeling of locomotion and impending arrival to at least somewhere was a feeling always there. Something always always going to happen, but never never arriving. You stared for a long time out of the window, you sniffed once and I watched your eyes flicker from one moving tree to another. You were as immature as me sometimes. No one could touch you as we passed the Tobacco Warehouse on the docks to the West.

New Job - Bob Dylan - And Ulysses

Finished 'Naked Lunch.' I'm on 'Dharma Bums' now, by Kerouac.

I'm applying for a new job. It's at the university library, and seems the perfect job for me. And it pays £17,000 a year. That 4 times as much as I'm getting now. If I got that job I could finally get my own place. I've got until the 23rd jan, and my app seems good since I got a degree, but I'd have to put referees from my uni tutors, even though I haven't seen them in little under a year. Now way I'm using anyone from the job I have now as referees.

Going to see Frank Turner on saturday. Can't wait, going to be a good day. Drinking comes early. Bob Dylan's getting closer too, and I was talking to a guy at work (an older fellah) about Dylan. It was cool because he said he'd listen to Dylan in the 60's. Went to see him on London Road, and Joan Baez was playing too.

Watched 'I'm Not There,' which is an amazing film, can't believe anyone has the nerve to criticise it. Also been listening to Damien Rice, can't beieve I haven't listened to him before.

Got back into my reading of Sylvia Plath for a little bit. I don't know why, but every time I read something I end up copying that style. I know I do have my own style, but I do tend to mimic another style after reading it. I end up forgetting what I'm writing. It was like that with Burroughs and Bukowski, I've done it with Coupland and Kerouac. What I really want to read it Ulysses. I've got it some where.

Photos, 8th Jan '09

My Visions Take Me Slowly

Picture scene:
Rocking forth of complete talk on the mantle,
Day-green, its madness bolted to the floor -

Bolted stillness, well she doesn't talk anymore.

Another scene:

A bathroom with acidic stench
Of bile and salt booming music thru floor -

Sitting down on toilet vomit thru mouth and nose,
Hot terrible sick burning the brain and tongue and mouth roof,
Searching thru madness for a swallowed golden tooth.

Over the sand very smooth very quietly
Our feet glide mushroom cloud cool breath
Of cold plants, the shadow slides inwards,

I am turning silver; I am drained outwards;

When naked dreams are talking to me,
"Why don't you talk to me?" my dad screams,

I am become my own vision,
Inside the bronze sculpture is one of stopped,
Incomplete, the chiselled soldier and odd meat,

Now enter this world, universe of slow numbers

Moves your rook.

Tired - American Poet - And Short Story Thoughts

Been dead tired recently, that's with getting up around 5am almost everyday for work. Only working the mornings, but it's killing me. End up sleeping thru the day and feeling far too tired to write - and if I read then I'll fall back asleep. Must have some sort of iron deficiency or something. Not that tired right now, little bit of coffee helped.

Just read some Robert Pinsky, an American poet. Really good. Going to start writing more, as in simple notes because I don't even do that anymore, I'm too lazy to be a writer. Saw a girl at the train station today (she looked like a porcelain doll) and she had this little note book, writing stuff. I wondered what she was writing, and then I thought why don't I write while I'm out and about? I'm thinking up stuff all the time, but it'd just come out crap on paper. Even a mate at work had a notebook, noting down bits of comedy becuase he does stand-up. I thought about writing comedy, thought of some stuff, never wrote it down.

Not done anything on that short story. Don't want to. I just wanted to put it on here. I think I like it, but not sure. It's not religious or anti-religious (I'm neither), but it's just interesting to use religion, and mix it with the narrator's thoughts on socialibility. I know most parts don't add up, doesn't matter as it's a first draft. The last bit with him turning into a robot was strange because I was just writing off the top of my head, describing the metallic taste turning him metallic. It has a funny social-sexual theme going on; the final words were meant to be funny, though. Like, he's becomes a social robot and so does everyone else with socialising and drinking alcohol and taking drugs, and disregarding religion for whatever reason, and they just say to get him up. Whatever, it was a little like my christmas eve.

Untitled Short Story (unedited)

I am a social liability. I am inside everything like a God of alcohol. I am pehaps a physical being, restored to the point of destruction - and the voices ringing inside outside the greasy ear of mine call 'all the best boys,' and a rhythm of continual bathing in society begins. It's a chilly night... he has lost his voice... he has become the very thing he couldn't believe that when he cannot speak he cannot live. When he has no voice I can speak for him. 'Two bottles of Scotch, my friend.'

'Two?'

'What are you? Counting them out? Yes, two.' I say to the side, 'cheap son of a bitch.'

When every ounce of pleasure has gone we go to get some more. Pleasure measured in ounces is hard to come by.

There are now three of us. We have been talking around a table for 3 hours. An aging man of social responsibility hates the flag. A girl coughs behind me. Sounds of electric buzzing periferate the atmosphere below thin wafts of smoke from the sly cigarette before someone gets kicked out. I am an automated, never-before-seen man of destruction. A God machine.

'Have to get to church in an hour,' I say.

'Didn't take you for a church-goer man.'

'I'm not - '

'He's not.'

'I'm not. I just have to meet someone. I'll be back here if you want to wait for me.'

'We'll go with you.'

'No. You're pissed off your faces.'

'Nooo... We'll go in and... hail Jesus!'

'... It's praise isn't it?'

'I'm a Buddah.'

'No your not.'

'Yes I am. How would you know?'

'I know you. You don't do anything to be Buddhist.'

So we walk in the torso of the night and it's killing to be in this cold and everytime I'm thinking of selling myself some exquisite social idea brings me to the next place, but walking the mile down the road freezing in our psycho societies, we're shouting, we're burnishing our voices, we're trying to be giants.

'None of us can.'

'Look at them.'

'Who?

'None of us.'

'Those girls - gone down there now...'

'We're going this way.'

'We can't even get in at this rate.'

'Where?'

'The church.'

'Eer... you aint comin in... your too drunk...'

'So... I'll show that Jesus!'

Laughing I tell the other one, 'Don't let him come in. Please.'

Laughing, he does, and they leave me and my Jesus. Inside the exquisite corpse hung up, the son of lamb a walking disease too skinny and stiff up to his armpits. And where is my Buddah? And where is Mo and the the others. I don't know but I feel like I'm in a pool of blood, up to my knees, and this poor Arab eyes staring at me like a homeless man begging for change and my friend at my left begging me to sit down and I do.

The sermon went on for an hour. I left. 'I have to go. I'll see you tomorrow,' is what I said when I left and I ran back to South Road and the frosty air clamping down on my knees turning my bones to ice and icicles like swords protruding from my eyes. I am running like a barbaric man ready for meat. The sky is dark but almost the colour of gherkins and I turn a corner, running and panting like a sick dog, and I get home... I mean I get back to the pub and there they are. And one shouts, 'Here he is! Son of Man! The man himself!'

'Shut up you fucking pisshead.'

'Bar's closed.'

'Shit.'

He offeres me his Guinness and it tastes of metal like drinking blood and I taste it on the back of my tongue, and my tongue turns metal and my insides turn metal and veins to copper wiring with that red and blue plastic coating, electric soul and all fantastic sexual fantasies are metallic, a bad reaction to the beer I'm having a terrible social erection; what's more painful is we're more or less unchanging unless fighting for some cause.

'I don't have one.'

'One what?'

'A cause.'

'Did you know the onion is a natural aphrodisiac?'

'No I didn't.'

Weeds that smell of onions grow between inch-thick iron and Frankenstein bolt, shit-coloured rust and swollen obscene torsos shaped like guns when bent over. Nurse figures playing on the mind, shoving thermometers that don't read any temperature, my finger on her trigger. And on my own.

'What you need is something special, my friend. Your getting uptight.'

I feel like I'm screaming through my nose and through inches of steel and iron and the taste of rust is like scabs. It's gonna be alright. Society has taken me for a ride and it bled on my metal. I see fleshy atrophied lightbulbs gripping thin-bodied pallid celing, Wah-Wah sound in dead of night, un-living eyes staring down at me behind a million echoes of 'Get him him up, quick.'

Undreaming Insect

In the walls there we hear screams of:
"Take me there. Take me there."

The bound of our emotions resolves
An anti-human drunk or sober

Love poem diverges in its opening credits,

The over-cautious worrying over our missus

Pushing away everybody got close

To even appreciate you - "Take me there. Take me there."
Her voice sounds like a time machine

A bogus rogue in a world of explosive energies
Do we ask the brown ash

Do yourselves a favour:

Old recipts reflect your yesterdays:

Sprays moisturisers blades
Canals the walls
Oasis Dylan Shultz and some recorded
Delivery off Lorne Road in Liverpool, England

A first class package dated and dies,
Dropped in smoke - "Take me there."

Truely the C captains itself overboard;

6 times stronger than heroin,
An ounce by the water
My Heroine delivers only me,
Its echo return dressed only in human skin,

The rest shimmers to fingertips

And works all day

And works all night so that the fading light

Never truely fades ...

"Take me there"
Make no mistake old microwaveable future
Already 8% of this century,
And not the least gonna to see the end of it;

Repeat take me away

- "Take me there" -
Christ, do you realise where you are right now?
A chemical bring-down already

Sexton Rimbaud

All my pretty ones;

All my ugly ones;

Come together like a great foundation

Of sinister sly memories.

White Pepper

A blue and white cat claws at my pant leg
Burying itself in the floor of its back
Rounded-off paws padded five times on each hand
Above its head and looking at me.

And I am drifting on by like a cloud of
White pepper dust caught up in the clutch of modern
Black pin-ball mechanics of our new generations
That don't stop their back-brain depressants.

Me on a high and feeling good like that cat
Who had all to live for lying on that floor
Clawing at specs of aerial dust, I come to roost
Like a pigeon in the sky going up with nothing holding me up

Naked Lunch - Cool Air - Laughing Drunk - Gig Tickets

Will publish 2 poems soon, but not sure about them. Just rushed words, which is all I seems to do with poems these days.

Listening to Ladytron, cool electro-rock band from Liverpool.

Reading Naked Lunch by Burroughs. Also got The Dharma Bums by Kerouac, and The Gum Thief by Coupland.

Getting my reading going again; poems are my enemy. Need to attempt fiction, will unlock that door tonight - will overdose on caffine (after football on tv).

Christmas was good, no family problems after it exploded a couple of days before. Like a kind of eruption that coolled down in the winter air. Xmas eve was legendary, I got drunk with 2 friends, and had to meet my family at the church. I showed up at the church drunk, looking round in the aisle for them, and they were stood right next to me saying sit down. I kept getting funny looks off people, but I just joked around with my sister. Had to run back to my friends at the pub, laughing my head off.

Got tickets to see Bob Dylan in May. Got tickets to see Frank Turner in 3 weeks.

"They only want you when you're seventeen, when you're twenty-one, you're no fun." - That's Ladytron, I remember that line. It's from like 6 years ago.

Brothers, Photos, and Paintings

Still haven't written anything, not even in my handwritten journal (hate that thing anyway), but I'll do some tomorrow.

Been having family trouble, which isn't good, especially a couple of days before christmas. My older brother sorted it out, but I think we (the brothers) are trying to be who our dad wasn't. I don't know what that means, my older brother is already a dad and a great one at that. I think we'd try to out-do each other with whatever we cn do; but me, I'd go out my way to out-do them for no reason. Doesn't say much about myself, really.

Been admiring the comments from my photos, which is cool. I'm planning on getting a proper camera, but I can't afford one so I'll just use my phone for now. Funny thing is, I might do some painting instead. I can't paint but I like it, plus I got one canvas board left. No work tomorrow, so I got time to do it.

Photos When I'm Trying

Thinking About Writing Stories - Ladytron - And Poets

Note: Listen to Ladytron

My friend at work taught me some Japanese.

Poets I've been reading: Anne Sexton, Peter Manson

I'm going to have to do my writing on paper again, because I just can't think in front of a blank screen unlike when I stare at a blank piece of paper. I keep writing poems but I don't want to because I don't really like them. I'll just end up reading something different and then my writing will become something different. Which is annoying.

Back in uni I wrote 5 great short stories that went into 2 portfolios. I got a First Class honour for them, (although my degree came to a 2:1). If you read my short stories you'd probably say "What's all that about?" And I'd say: "I dunno. What do you think?" I manage to take one set theme and work in in through dialogue and other stuff, and was complimented for stylising a genre at uni, but the one inspiration (or main one) for story writing was Hemingway's 'Hills Like White Elephants.' It's the only story I think of when I write.

But with poetry, I don't know what the hell I'm trying to say. The best poem I've written is 'Transition,' I think.

I can't think of anything to write,and then I struggle, and then it becomes like a chore. Then writing isn't something I want to do. It's not wrtiter's block, sometimes I can think of stuff, but I don't want to write it down. I just need to leave, go travel the world. But I can never do that, because I always seem to tie myself down to this place.

Some Notes on Discarded Songs

Here are some notes I can't find anything to do with:

"Here's to you
The one I never knew

Hope I find
A way back into your life

I like the way
You find your way into my world

I love the way
You hide yourself from my world."


Yeah, it rhymes, it was pieces of a song I imagined while laying in bed, but most of the time I'm way too lazy to get up and write it down. With this, I was tapping my foot to this imaginary beat and singing this song in my head, I sat up and wrote it down, but all I got was this. I sounded better in my head, there was music and everything.

I wrote pieces of songs on some paper at work. I don't know why I'm trying songs, because I know I can't do it.

"Where has the time gone/ We're waking up so slowly/ Waking up horizontally/Freedom."

"You think about leaving your life for another life."

"The parfume environment smells exactly like chocolate/ But vinegar or coffee."
(I was working with parfumes)

"Growing old at the table."

4 Photos: City and Home

Hypertext Production

Again the process of handwritten exercises
Fill the skin with the permanent non-rush
Of premium fading lights;

Those lights fill the skin
With investigation and thrill and forethought
It is beyond my hand
And prism waterloo plain -

The grass itself exists by sight alone.

Again the process of killing
Universe karma love missy,
I hear your prissy little flavourings

Of talk you

Walk a slow drogue
And assembly of writers

Uttering 'LIFE'
And weeping the resolved time shift

And foreward in time excuse the clear
Shimmer of the fallen; excuse me my sweet
False blood; but not yourself your

Sexy clone wavers another ego.

Again the glass lights personalities
And what we cannot believe is after work;

Really we rarely cut into the arm of attention,

This tint of green vile plumage fills the waters,
Unclear grass ages the wrinkles
Swap beds and kiss gratuitously

Your God is buried with his or her

Laughter in his or her grave.

The Condition

The human forms itself by television
Sequential 'Love Poem' becomes balding surface
Chopping onion rings that shrink
Burn and compose your dear eyes and skin -
Light becomes clear and the human form is,
At length, part of the song -
Only the song and nothing else.

A poem of 'ME' and nought else,
Shit indulgence of rubber and Lords
Shit in the process of hypercondria;
Shit thought-process processes the fateful shit -

The skin, the granite, are similar things;
Unrecognised: the 'US' is a great familiarity
To say the least, I'm held down
By walking bleak townships in morning light,
Poor young fellow by first light
Is taller than he really is.

Never that place in humanity
Is a real place to be secluded;
Humour and horror and red-faced
Understanding the 'Poem' by artificial light
Of treason - a kind-of exception
Walking out on the human a'ghearrach.

It seems to me you've lived
Your life this far: the form -
The form to wait here until completely ready
Or necessary to present the world all our habits;
The form in its naked reasonable face and body
Slender and firm ready to pounce like cats,
The form made of grey and usually no other colour,
The human form owes something to time and hell
And sexy electricity of warm adventure,
The form behind eyes schools and tortoise shells,
The human form in a style of public squares
Hiding our very decent pubic psychosis,
The human form a neo-joke
Grinding our ligaments into flour and then bakes
Into bread ... And nothing else.

Photos on Thurs 4th Dec

Made-up Dialogue

"I think that socially we become more or less adolescent."

"And that means what, exactly?"

"I'm having a hard time putting two and two together."

"Get out."

"What?"

"Just get out. You're getting on my nerves. I hate you."

"Whatever, Trevor, just think about my problems before yours."

"Why?"

"Because mine are more serious than yours."

"In what way?"

"In the way that I don't care about your problems."

"Funny, you are, aint you. Now get out."

"I'm going. But just remember..."

"What?"

"Remember that... Remember that time I got drunk and left my shoes here?"

"That was only yesterday."

"I know."

"...Just leave will you. You're grating on my nerves now."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"I still can't find my shoes..."

NorthWestern Destructive (Or Drift)

What does the buzz of me signify?
You see me here, I am brought to you to destroy
Everything that you see - the fighter in the sand
Great expectation of the world in my hand;
It is mersion of mercy - I beg your pardon?

The devil walks in my garden.

What brings together the bud of your existence?
An unending dog at every great white guru fleet;
It is only in your heaven your haze of not one woman
Who bore our excess of nostalgia of the doorman -
It is a distinct Ki, Swahili, in another dimension;

I fell down in the desert where I will mention

My mind swelling like a balloon blown up by a trumpet,
And seeing above sand dunes and lying down to the landscape;
I am brought here to destroy you.
I am in the 1940's off-camera/settling the authentic aroma of being
On camera. And this is you: begging to the preacher

Such a strange and desperate creature.

Downstairs I hinder all well being of a recylable universe -
Non-recyclable Earth makes it's awful boom
And we make our awful booms riding the highway
Back into the snaking desert; an ancient child.
Your great phony process of lasers moves me,

You are great beyond NorthWestern stars above me

However, I read my newspaper back in Tuesday white morning
And man is not like woman, where life may never end
In pools of clear bright and marble-like creatures similar to frogs,
And our depressed relatives look like dogs
And the lust to destroy you is like giving you the world,

Have it all curled around your finger,

Then a great partition of days separate like oil in rainwater
Puddles in roadside gutter on way to school -
Great Atlantis vantage point from insipid cup of tea - sweet weak
Just like you or me a creature of the meek;
I am quite self-righteous, preaching to the devil

All that I have discovered this side of the sea-level.

This weak white morning froze ignorance in its grave;
Can't make me bide time worried in the middle,
Poor destruction already done suicidal version of creation,
I don't care about economy or astronomy or the death of a nation;
I just wanna know what brings you to me in your warning adept motion,

My brain is in a shoebox - I throw my heart in the ocean.

Tuesday Morning

Confrontation at the Pasty Counter

As I sit listening to The Doors, I'm squashing my foot sitting cross-legged. - problem fixed.

In work today I was talking to my mate as we put stuff on the shelves. He's into stand-up comedy, and it's interesting to hear about his gigs. I haven't seen him at a gig yet. But the conversation drifted and ended and went quiet. Then I smelt some food from the small cafe next to us in the shop. I say to him: "Those pasties smell nice." And he says to me: "Yeah, they do." And then I just generally smile, and that was that. Simple enough.

But damn it when I decide to smile again, thinking about the food, because the guy behind the counter of the cafe kept staring at me, and I noticed this every time I looked over. Now I wasn't looking at the food, but at him. Then, I hear him say something to my mate and I thought they're where just having a quick chat, you know? But no. I hear the word "dickhead," (from the cafe guy) and I say to my mate, "What did he just say to you?" You know sticking up for him.

The guy thought we were laughing at him and we're now having an argument with him. I stick up for myself, you see, acting hard on purpose. And he tells his boss and I tell mine (not manager, but a team leader) and she's saying stuff like, what a silly bugger or something. But we don't tell the boss, who walks over just then. We just don't.

We end up joking about it, laughing. We tell the others. One is quite buff, does karate. He goes over to the cafe but doesn't see the guy. I was angry, not fuming, I'd fight him if I had to. I stick up for my friends. But as we laugh, I'm seeing that this is going to be part of his act; the angry guy selling pasties and fruitcake.

One more thing: found out I have ADD. Makes sense for some things about myself.

Anti-Racism - And A Jacket Too Small

A Quick note: Coming home from work I'd bought Wall-e on dvd and some hair gel and as I got to the train station I found myself in the middle of an anti-bnp rally. They're those racist nationalists who hide behind a political party, so you can see I'm already against them, and I found myself wanting to join in. But it was cold, I didn't know anyone there, and there was about 50 policemen around and I had a knife in my pocket from work, which isn't the most unincriminating piece of evidence and reason to arrest me. So I was on my way, and got some leaflets off some guys who rather angrily protests "Stop the bnp" as I took a leaflet as if he was converting me away from racism.

I felt like saying, "Hey, guy, I've got the t-shirt," you know?

As the quick note goes on, I bought a jacket off the internet, thinking i'd be hip in doing that. I'm only 23 and i'm hardly down with the times. For the second time I got the wrong size. The first one was too big, now this one is too small. They're going to think I'm pulling some scam here, yeah, I'm buying jackets and sending them back illegaly. But I want my jacket!

Got Frank Turner tickets for january. These are replacement tickets (because he cancelled last time) but I've just bought some anyway! damn, I keep spending money when I should be saving. Mental Note: Stop Spending Money.

Metamorphose

Giving Nothing away,

An ultranova,
The small sediment
Travels velocities - deposits in its river -
Runs smaller than myself;

I switch lives
And kill off all cowardice - transfer my

Breathing,
Transfer my voice into Baby Jesus and speak,

Giving away Nothing
Like a Communist hologram;

The major pulpit
The journey

Journeys to Earth.

Roadhouse Blues and Jogging

Today in work I wrote some songs on some paper, while I was supposed to be listing items that needed replenishing. They were shit, really, and it's strange how hard it is to write while at work. I just can't think of any words; and I ended up with a tune in my head of some song I can't remember.... Oh, it was Roadhouse Blues by The Doors. So I was ripping off Jim Morrison writing this shit and I call them songs because I took the rhythm from a song and I made it rhyme. What's with people wanting poems to rhyme? I don't care for rhyming that much, it just seems childish if it's not done properly and if it's not a song. So when I don't use rhyme they say 'it's not a poem 'cause it don't rhyme.'

I left the pad of paper in work, but I might bring it home and write them on here, but they are shite. You can just tell how forced it was. And it gets me thinking, how do I write? Or what do I write? I thought I was good back in Uni, but now I don't know. Whatever, I need to concentrate on my short stories, which I might put on here.

Another thing, while I was going to work the other day I saw two joggers. Now this is like 6 in the morning. I mean, that's commitment. Maybe if I could commit to work like that. Work as in writing.

I got an email from Uni, says they still have my MA application and I'll find out if I got in or not in the New Year. I'd sent them an email because I was worried they'd lost my application since I'd sent it in the Summer and then was told the course won't start til 2009. But I hope I get in. If not, I've gotta leave this place. That place in JMU is the only anchor I've here right now. I think.

Hotel England

This house holds me in - Oh no;
Recluse is a social no-show
Cannot be driven by goddess living room
Coffee queen or set loose but

Reckless -
This house is a
Freedom house;

A house of freedom
A house of free-dumb - Wheel of Fortune
Extravaganza manic-street episodes;
Pre-disposed table, gully and lampshade,
House I am a brick wall,
House ten years old, 11 years, 12 ... 13 -

I mean it stops time,
The point is, house, it is
Going up going down house
Mutiny house;
Mad house on the inside terrace-
Disjointed/detatched - mug house;
Further down the road house;
Work house;
Economical downturn house;
Druggie/alky/loud house of demented
Madness on all fours, Oh abuse me house,
Use me house, November house;
November rain/Screaming house/Inside house/
This house with its glasses on reading this book by Coupland
With a haunting sensation of heade
Stockpiled up against seedy walls and his shuck
House replayed your living space - a room with you and your risky hands;

I know the right way house
No, I'm not a gemini
I'm that horse-man aren't I?
Your words are caught up in Hollywood
Soapy adolescent morale
Bi-polar dog is calling me
I don't know how I feel.

I don't hear a thing.

Black n' White in '06 - Crosby Beach

I found these photos I took back in October 2006, and I did quite a few and I tried to decide if it was worth it to have them in black and white, and these three were the only ones that I thought looked good that way.

Backwards

No Sun Here
Day Broken Fly away
Scarf warm dehydration driving
Head To mind
Hollow Sounds
I like to write this
Sdrawkcab forwards
Splled wrng wrds
Tell Tale of Death
Mmmmm, lovely and bleak
Fragile eyes Fragile ground
Favorite Song: Hey Joe
I know what you're thinking
As you read
And And And...

In Korova

8 arms & I must be high
Half-naked in bed
The high-tide wind comes in
And in the darkness I've taken
You all in my hand ...


All this time the taste of tea and blood
And ticking weather sound in my head
Of clocks and car engines resting their bodies
In cold starry wet grit,


Buddah is more reasurring
Because he hardly speaks;
In an instant before he speaks
There is the soft mellow of reality
Sandwiched together between my hands ...
Lying in bed ... Bare skin my blanket ...


4 brothers at one time,
Firing echoes of words no one hears
(2 half-brothers), heaving a coffin on our shoulders,
Don't let it drop,
Don't let one teardrop fall I mistakenly thought
He believed in whiskey and nothing else.


Most sick of death
When death becomes you -
Or that taste of blood;
Stalking your 70 year old feet,
Stood under the bulky trunk
The stink of shit and antiseptic
Like hospital wards of moaning croners
Wishing for whiskey
Like the Irish and the Indians.


Thinking I was great after I turned
To the blood cut-up into
Voicless pieces of meat
Where am not a man: a boy
Miles away from monday
Mother of hatred;
I do not hate you
Suicidal modern city is drunk again,
You'll rot in your grave for that.


2 friends drinking themselves to life;
We cannot be left to our own faint shiver of reason
Found shallow breathing at 3 O' Clock tables
Such specific nights at the tip of the world
Leaking neon and hydrogen and music sweet music
Made me a man to act this way.


And general music zombie from beyond the grave,
Farewell to the flesh
Crows their falsetto following
Buddah with his own problems ...

The Unluckiest Weekend Ever - And The Best Bar Ever

Didn't see Frank Turner because he'd gotten sick in Nottingham and finished early, so I checked his blog to see what the score was. Only when we were in town I found out he wasn't coming. It was the only thing me and my mate Dan were looking forward to after the worst Halloween. We sat in Lloyd's kind of laughing at how this has been the worst weekend, especially after Dan said last week it was going to be the best ever. (I mean, my dad died, Liverpool lost, Frank Turner cancels.) We went to a friend's flat to get my jacket I'd left on friday and walked all the way back to see if the support bands were playing. They weren't. Town seemed completely empty. Well, it was completely empty - I mean at one point we were the only two people in the Office and you could hear our conversation wall to wall when the song changed. I felt bad leaving the barmaid on her own.

It was a choice of going home and sulking or finding somewhere to drink. It was about finding a place we hadn't been in before. And we found it. We saw some guys taking guitars and amps inside and we walked in too. Got some drinks, sat down. Was a strange looking place. But we liked it. There was a band playing downstairs so we went and saw them. Didn't know if we had to pay, but we'd already bought tickets for that night anyway.

We stayed there until about 2 or 3am. We decided we couldn't tell anyone about this bar, because when that happens, everyone finds out about it and it turns into a fucking night club and 'the place to be.' So I'm not even going to say what it's called on here. We keep saying things need to change, and we got some of that change. But what it is, I need my own place. I'm getting a flat next year when I'm back at uni. It's the only thing to stop us being bored with life - that and learn to play guitar quicker.

Worse Halloween - And a Funeral

That was the shittest Halloween ever. With no costume, I had a half-assed zombie make-up thing put together within 2 minutes before leaving for a night in town that lasted a total of .... 2 and a half hours. I didn't go on the tour with the others, so 3 of us in costume walking around town while drunken criminals in old-man pubs got all rowdy and we looked for anyone else in costume. We found a place. Not only had it gotten shit in there, when the others came back we left for a club that was £8, so I didn't go in. 3 of us went home. I left my coat in the flat in town and it was £15 in the cab.

On the same day I buried my dad. Me and my brother carried it (along with our 2 half brothers). We didn't expect it to be that heavy. It made me sick. It was a Catholic funeral because my dad was Catholic, so me and my brother didn't know what we were doing. When we got to the cemetary we carried it to the hole and we had to lower it into the ground. Threw in soil. Threw in a flower. Family members I've never seen before began crying. My little sister was crying. I felt myself wanting to cry but I fought it back, couldn't be having that. But I have to say, as much as I hated him, it's the saddest and most difficult thing I've ever done.

Holes in the House

How cold is the house when there's no windows? So bloody cold! We had new windows done and so it was like living in a giant block of Swiss cheese ('cause of the holes). Well it all got done yesterday - and a new front door - and now the kitchen's getting a 'makeover' and it looks like a construction site, which is all I saw of the city 2 months ago. I'm living off Cup-a-Soup's and coffee.

I'm off work for about a week and a half starting friday, and Halloween is next week. I was going to go on a tour of haunted places but that was booked up, so we'll prob go get drunk round town. On the 2nd Nov I'm going to a Frank Turner gig. (He's an acoustic musician, look him up). But it's just time to get away from work; the early starts are driving me mad.

I haven't written anything in a while. I just haven't had the energy. I'm falling behind. I don't even read that much anymore. I've started and not finished 3 books because I got bored of them. I have a low attention span, you see. I'm far too easily distracted.

My dad died on Sunday. In his house. Prob drank himself to death. Don't know when the funeral is, but I'll be carrying the coffin. What's that? A Pallbearer? I'll be one of them.

Notes in a List

1. Staring into space is tiresome...

2. Laugh 'till you cry. Hahahahahaha!

3. Saturday the weirdos come out. Sunday seems kind of illegal.

4. Read plays as well as novels.

5. Memorise jokes. Especially other people's jokes.

6. Smoke in Winter. All the cool kids do it.

7. Give your alter ego a name. Mines Mikey. I knew a friend whose was Pedro.

8. Play around with music.

9. Don't buy shit.

10. Steal edible things.

11. If you (or have been) in a place where you can't see for the smoke, you're in the right place.

12. Smell drugs before you take them.

13. Act like the person you look up to.

14. If you haven't a person to look up to, then get one.

15. Learn to speed read.

16. Tell lies. It's like reading a story.

17. Make up back stories for people you see in the street.

18. If you wake up drunk somewhere with green hair and eye liner, lie back down.

19. All the spirituality you may need from yoga is to sit cross-legged.

20. By all means, break all rules.